Londo and G'kar are not minor characters, though important, next to the stations crew, but are actually the two main protagonists. All the other characters are really just supporting cast to help telling their very own story.

Also, Londo isn't just an alcoholic. He is also addicted to power and prestige. In his constant effort to gain more respect he allies himself with other power hungry men, never notices how much damage they are doing to others, and when he realizes what he has done, he can never turn his back on his allies because he can't cope with losing their respect. He lies to what few friends he has left, to hide his association with other conspirators, and when openly accused becomes violently angry and makes up justifications for what he did. And every time he manages to break free, it takes only a tiny nudge by a former ally or a personal tragedy to forget about all his promises to himself to never get drawn into it again. Mr. Morden also uses the classic drug dealer tactic of offering some first tastes of great power for free, but later makes increasingly greater demands for his continued service as Londos ace in the hole.

Word of God on several occasions has it that the entire main arc is essentially Londo's story. Londo even gets the very first spoken lines in the entire canon, the opening narration of "The Gathering":

Londo: "I was there at the dawning of the third age of mankind..."

President Clark's entire administration has some very chilling real life echoes in at least two, if not three, different American Presidential periods - and one of them didn't even start until the 2000's rolled around (i.e. after the show's run had ended). Pure brilliance on Straczynski's part.

Donald Trump's presidential run has, again, made the Clark administration resonate very uncomfortably with reality.

JMS has stated that one of the things he was trying to get across with the Clark administration is that this sort of thing can happen any time, anywhere people are willing to believe in the Big Lie. When someone smugly stated that it could never happen in 20th Century America, JMS immediately pointed to Sen. Joseph McCarthy and the House Unamerican Activities Committee.

The Vorlon method of teaching the younger races doesn't work and never would! Just look at the Minbari, the only race we know to have significant long term influence by the Vorlons, they seem to have barely progressed technologically in the thousand years since the last Shadow war. The Vorlon teachings make a society so disciplined and rigid that there's little room for creative thought which leads to few innovations and improvements. Sure, to a Vorlon taking a few thousand years to progress is not a concern, but their immortal, the younger races can't do that because they don't live long enough to benefit from that kind of lifestyle. You'll notice that every single advancement we know of from the Minbari occured due to direct alien influence (Valen restructured Minbari society and made all the castes equal, the Vorlons allowed the Minbari to use some of their technology to creat the White Stars and everything that happens to them during the series happens due to Delenn's constant contact with humans). Notice how humanity managed to come up with ships that can fight and destroy White Stars in a little over a decade after being completely ineffective against the Minbari during their war? And all they had to work with was one Shadow ship for a couple of years, while the Minbari had Vorlon access for centuries and still needed the Vorlons to directly give them the technology. While the Shadows' methods go too far as well their methods actually do get results it's just they go too far and get themselves destroyed. The series is about finding a "balance between order and chaos", as Delenn had said in "Into the Fire". "Who are you" and "what do you want" are both fundamentally important questions for all sentient beings, defining where you stand and where you are going, respectively. Focusing on just one without the other each carry its own set of dysfunctions. As an old saying goes: "give your children both roots, and wings."

Actually, the Minbari did visibly progress technologically: back in the previous Shadow War their main weapons were apparently short-ranged antimatter weapons (the Expanded Universe explains that the Vree antimatter weapons and reactors are based on Minbari wrecks from that era), by the seventeenth century they've gone to fission cannons (the direct ancestor of the fusion cannon) as secondary weapons and longer-ranged molecular agitators as main weapons while keeping a single antimatter weapon (the antimatter converter) for Orbital Bombardment, by the 20th they've replaced the fission cannons and molecular agitators with their evolved variants (the fusion cannons, in use on all 23rd century ships as a dual-use weapon, and the molecular disruptor respectively) and improved their jump drives and stealth, and in mid-21st century introduced the powerful and long-range neutron laser, and all of it without Vorlon help. Then again, that progress came after Valen, who did introduce a balance of sort...

A better example would have been the Orieni, an Expanded Universe race that worshipped the Vorlon as gods and wanted to spread their philosophy of order through the cosmo: at the start of their war with the Centauri in the early 21st century they held the advantage thanks to slightly superior technology and much better crews and officers, but as the war progressed the Centauri adapted and gained the upper hand while the Orieni refused to change in the slightest, resulting ultimately in a (costly) Centauri victory.

Why is "ahel" ("Ah, hell!") Minbari for "continuous fire"? It's something Valen/Sinclair said once when he was backed into a corner and forced to shoot his way out.

The Shadows believed that they would die if anything Vorlon touched Z'ha'dum. Most assumed it's the White Star that did it. However, something Vorlon touched the planet before then: Sheriden was carrying the piece of Kosh with him. The Shadows sealed their own fates by bringing him there.

Everyone we see answer Morden's question ("What do you want?") gets what he asked for; Londo gets a return to Centauri Empire's imperialist days, and later G'kar gets to see the Centauri Empire bombed to rubble, and in between, Vir gets to wiggle his fingers at Morden's head on a spike. Of them, though, Vir was the only one who asked for something which, by the time the request was fulfilled, he actually wanted.

There's also a theory that Morden reacted so badly to Vir's answer because he knew that, one way or another, the Shadows saw to it that everyone who answered that question got what they asked for.

Vir's request is punctuated by a sarcastic inquiry as to whether or not Morden's associates can arrange that for him. Ultimately, Vir's request is fulfilled by none other than one of Morden's associates, Londo Molari.

Morden visiting Lennier on the Day of the Dead seems fairly random, a surprise for the sake of a surprise, until I realised it makes perfect sense given Lennier's character arc for the season, Morden was the representative of the Shadows who always asked "What do you want?" and Lennier is now blinded completely by what he wants, Delenn. Just as Morden led those who answered his question into tragedy (except Vir, who actually got what he wanted), so too will Lennier's pursuit of what he wants.

In The Gathering, the Fake!Lyta attacks Dr Kyle using what will later be shown to be a common Minbari pike fighting move, hinting at the assassin's true identity.

In War Without End, after they are informed of the special devices to protect them during time travel, Ivanova mentions the pilot who died of old age after being exposed to the time rift, then looks at Sinclair, significantly aged since his last appearance, and declares that he must have been lucky during his own visit. That could also be the reason for Garibaldi going bald.

Though Ivanova's convinced it was due to a Noodle Incident involving them and a smuggler.

After Sheridan is captured in season four, we see him being worked over by Clark's men, who use drugs and torture in an attempt to get him to work with them. You would naturally wonder why they don't use telepaths, who have the ability to overwrite part of people's personality, like they did with Garibaldi in the same season. We discover in the next season that carrying Kosh inside him made Sheridan invulnerable to telepathic manipulation. (It also gave him the ability to read Vorlon, which was revealed even earlier)

They might not have even tried. Sheridan's interrogator states that they needed Sheridan's "conversion" to be genuine, as replacing him or using a virtual mockup would be noticed. Presumably, if a telepath altered his personality, another telepath of the same or greater rating would notice what had been done.

In Dust to dust Londo makes Vir promise not to let anyone think of his job at Minbar as a joke. On rewatch it's possible to tell that there was something Vir wasn't telling Londo when he made the promise. Vir was using his position to save Narns, which makes the whole scene ironic.

Why, in the pilot, did Kosh expose himself at all to "Sinclair" on his arrival? It seems like a strange, forced thing for a super-secretive Vorlon to do that right out the gate - it's not like it would have been out of character for him to just stare at a hand extended in greeting. It's because Kosh may have had a moment of weakness on meeting someone who is, to him, probably an old friend: Valen. That moment of initial contact could also have been useful to telepathically manipulate or plant a piece of himself in Sinclair secretly, especially since Vorlons tend to be very controlling in their indirect, cryptic, almost deniable way.

At the beginning of "Atonement", Ivanova is headed to a Drazi festival wearing the Green Leader sash. A few scenes later, we see Ivanova on crutches, clearly the worse for wear. It's more than one Drazi year since "The Geometry of Shadows", but this is likely the direct result of her "solution" in that episode (she had all the green sashes dyed purple), and the "festival" may have been the official ending of the conflict.

Speking of the Green and Purple Drazi from Geometry of Shadows, on hindsight, the conflict between the two seemed like a foreshadowing of the Shadow war? The Greens are the Vorlons and the Purples the Shadows. Both sides respected the rules of combat, but then the Greens started killing the Purples (the Vorlons started using planet killers in order to "kill" those influenced by the Shadows).

In Day of the Dead Londo can't understand how Reebo and Zooty are supposed to be comedic. Meanwhile, humans find the duo uproariously funny. The viewer doesn't get to see much of their routine, but will probably have a hard time "getting it", just like Londo. Now think of this: Humanitys culture hasn't been stagnant for centuries like Centauri culture, it has remained ever-changing (just think of 200 years worth of internet memes). Londo is conservative, so he doesn't understand, while Reebo and Zooty are the hippest beings in space for lightyears. Neither Londo nor the viewer understands Reebo and Zootys humor because they are 200 years behind!

It's also possible that the joke is one of those "you had to be there" things. It was hilarious in context, but to someone only hearing about it via the hype machine, the joke goes over their heads. In Usenet, JMS specifically compared it to Steve Martin's Catchphrase "Excuuuuuuuse me!" At the time it was uproarious, and repeated to memetic proportions. But if someone were to say it today, it'd be obnoxious.

Londo established early on that many Centauri have prophetic dreams about their fate. When reviewing the career of the Centauri Emperor Turhan - who ends Centauri mistreatment of Narns, kept making peace offerings to them, and allowing the Narns to claim more and more Centauri territory as a means of atonement - it's likely that Turhan saw his death would signal the beginning of another Centauri/Narn War and sought to do whatever he could to prevent it or at least give the Narns a fighting chance.

Look at how Turhan behaves during his episode: he departs for Babylon 5 acting as though he knew he wasn't coming back; and he keeps asking to see Kosh, because he knew he wouldn't die until he'd actually met a Vorlon (to ask the question "How will it all end?").

Borders on Fridge Horror because Turhan might have foreseen his departure would mean the death of his closest friend the Prime Minister (whose own prophetic dreams probably told him the same thing).

And as an example of Unintended Consequences, Turhan's overtures to the Narns weakened Centauri position among the galactic races and instigated too many court plots and plans for war against Narn the first chance they could get.

A nitpick: not all Centauri dream of their death (lord Kiro, for example, not only didn't dream of it but was actually skeptical about the prophecy of his death being at the hands of some unknown "shadows", when he did die at the hands of the Shadows). That said, Turhan's wife was a seer, and, according to the RPG, he came to Babylon 5 knowing he'd die there... But not what Londo and Refa were pulling.

Connected to the previous, Centauri pilots and Londo specifically are noted to be complete madmen in dangerous situations. Taking turns so violent the pilot blacks out but has an advantagous position when he comes too is apparently standard procedure according to what we hear during a Starfury training exercise. If they already know in advance if they'll die in combat or not, either way they'll naturally act like they have nothing to lose.

As pointed out above, not all Centauri know how they'll die, and not all of them fight like madmen. Then again, Londo did know how he'd die, so that would explain it.

On the topic of Centauri pilots, if you watch the space battle between the humans and the Centauri in The Lost Tales, note that the Centauri ships are demonstrably more powerful, easily outmaneuvering even the famously agile Starfuries (possibly aided by the blackout tactic).

During the Earth-Minbari War the Minbari seemed to follow some of Clausewitz's dictates, namely 'political' attacks to weaken the enemy (the threats that isolated Earth from their allies and allowing Mars' rebellion) and aiming for the center of gravity (the Black Star was destroyed early in the war when raiding the Sol system). Valen was originally a Terran soldier of British descent, with British military thinking having been greatly influenced by Clausewitz.

In There All The Honor Lies, Sheridan is sent by Kosh to experience a "moment of perfect beauty". He enters a room an encounters a robed figure asking for an offering. In exchange for a part of his uniform which Sheridan admits is almost of no value, a room full of the robed figures perform a beautiful song for him. Fast forward to the series finale, Sleeping in Light, and Vir relates a story Londo told about Pak'ma'ra singing, and how their voices were the most beautiful things he'd ever heard, and it becomes apparent that Sheridan might have been audience to a Pak'ma'ra choir. Where else would he find himself in a position to enjoy such a thing than in darkness, unable to judge the aliens based on their outward appearance?

The only issue with that is that the robed figures sing a real life monastic chant, specifically part of Christmas Mass. Why would Pak'ma'ra be singing in Latin?

Vir drowning his sorrows with a Shirley Temple? Well, it's not like his species can't drink alcohol, but consider Vir's boss and the shit he gets himself into that Vir has to end up fielding in some form or another. He'd really like a freaking drink, but he probably can't afford to let his guard down at all.

According to information in the books ''The Shadow Within'' and the ''Passing of the Techno-Mages'' trilogy, Morden had a wife and daughter that were supposedly trapped, fully conscious, in a bubble of hyperspace after the transport they were travelling in exploded ( which the Shadows offered to end with merciful deaths in exchange for Morden's services to them). Knowing this, one wonders if the man Bester's apprentice "spaced" (in hyperspace) in the episode "The Corps is Mother, the Corps is Father" suffered a similar fate—conscious but trapped in some sort of eternal (or very very long) limbo in hyperspace, with no way out. We don't know much about the properties of hyperspace, but it seems that under some circumstances anyway it is liveable. And we know that Psi Corps or their agents have used lifelong mental tortures as punishment (a la the fate of the serial killer of telepaths which Lyta described in another episode). Imagine being trapped, forever, in that weird and unnerving soup that is hyperspace....

Delenn outlives every person who mattered to her, except maybe Vir, likely including her son. Marcus, Londo, G'Kar, Sheridan, Ivannova, Garibaldi, Zach, Lyta, Lennier and all dead for certain, it's stated something very bad happened to David Sheridan, possibly killing him as well, leaving only Vir in question. And not only are they dead but her loved ones sacrifices are being forgotten and insulted by the current generation. No wonder she's spent decades in seclusion.

David had a Keeper put on him on his 16th birthday from the gift Londo gave Delenn and Sheridan, requiring them to return to Centauri Prime where Londo dies.

David is still alive as of "Sleeping in Light" when he's an adult and serving as a Ranger. Given that humans routinely live over one hundred years by this time, he's likely to still be alive unless something has happened to him. Delenn may even have grandchildren and great-grandchildren depending upon how compatible David's genetics are with either humans or Minbari. However, Vir likely is not alive if the timeline given by Galen in "The Lost Tales" holds true. Galen states that twenty years in the future (from 2271) Prince Vintari will take the Centauri throne. Londo reigns for 18 years, which means that Vir gets 12 years as emperor. Of course, since Sheridan's actions altered the timeline, Vir may still be on the throne by that point, to be succeeded later by either Vintari or Vir's own son. Given that the academic panel in "Deconstruction of Falling Stars" didn't mention anything about a war with the Centauri in the hundred years since the founding of the Interstellar Alliance, it's likely Sheridan's plan of influencing Vintari to be less hostile toward Earth worked. And, given that Sheridan and Delenn fostered Vintari, it's likely she formed a bond with the Centauri prince as well. And these are only the people we see on-screen: Delenn has her own blood relatives, fellow Religious caste members, etc. So Delenn isn't as completely without emotional bonds by that point as one might suppose, although it's understandable that she'd take extreme exception to those who'd run down the legacy of her loved ones.

David is conceived in season Five (2262), and if Delenn's gestation is similar to humans, he'd have been born late in that year or (more likely) early in 2263. Sheridan went to Zha'ha'dum in late 2260 and was given 20 years of resurrected life, putting "Sleeping in Light" in early 2281. David's 18 at most when his father dies (Sheridan specifically says in "Objects at Rest" he won't be around when his child "comes of age" at 21) and if he inherited either species' normal lifespan, it's likely he's still alive by "Deconstruction." Of course accidents happen to Rangers, and it's possible a hybrid wouldn't live as long as either parent species, but there's no reason to think David wouldn't survive and as Delenn's repeatedly referred to as "half human, half Minbari" even if she culturally identifies as Minbari, David's 3/4 human and likely compatible with humans.

In the episode Intersections In Real Time, the interrogator mentions that he takes a little bit of poison daily, so that he gradually builds up an immunity. He feels it is a metaphor for something, but he can't quite think of what it might be. He spends the entire episode declaring (entirely unironically) that the Truth is entirely arbitrary, and trying to bring Sheridan around to admit that. He has been touting Clark's propaganda for so long, he seemingly believes it by now, even as unbelievable as it seems to Sheridan and the viewers. This of course, blinds him to the very metaphor he is trying to explain. It's pretty much the only time in the episode that he seems to falter during his battle of wills with Sheridan.

Michael Garibaldi, the brilliant security chief, failed to realize that forcibly seceding from the Earth Alliance would result in a disruption of his postal service? The same postal service provided by the Earth Alliance? Seems like a bit of an odd blindspot for his deductive skills.

I don't think he had missed the fact that postal service would be disrupted, he was just pissed about the extra fees.

In "A Late Delivery From Avalon," Marcus proposes that McIntyre might actually be the real King Arthur, preserved by the Vorlons in much the same way that Sebastian a/k/a Jack the Ripper was. Franklin objects, saying that 'Arthur's' speech patterns are too modern by about 1400 years. A very logical objection...except that Sebastian's speech patterns should be about 350 years out of date as well (of course, the only major character he interacts with for a significant length of time is Delenn, and their entire conversation may have been in Minbari). Consider how well Shakespeare's works or the original King James Bible holds up for modern English readers to see what a difference this should make.

It's pretty much stated that Sebastian has been awakened from time to time for similar purposes, so it's entirely possible that at least some of his speech patterns have evolved over time as he's experienced future time periods. The Vorlons seem also to have extended his life, so Sebastian may have experiencedmore years than his appearance would suggest, even taking his periods of long sleep into account.

Also it has been suggested by Arthur C. Clarke that linguistic drift stopped once it became possible to record the human voice (which happened about a decade before the Whitechapel murders). So it's quite possible that whenever English is being spoken no translation is being done. Since it's possible for a modern English speaker to understand Jane Austen, they should be able to understand Sebastian (especially since he knows he's talking to someone of a different background, so would make his speech as general as possible, avoiding all colloquialism).

If the opening narration from Seasons 1-3 is supposed to be some kind of historical record, like diary entries or what have you, there should be no reference from Sinclair to "the dawn of the Third Age of Mankind." He was long gone before the Old Ones bugged out.

Also, in Londo's narration that opens The Gathering, he states that B5 achieved its greatness "under the leadership of its final commander." It shows admirable foresight from JMS that he didn't name that commander. The problem is, the last commander of B5 we see is Lochley.

In "Legacies" the command staff is rattled by a Minbari ship approaching with open gun ports until Delenn explains the gesture. So after a misinterpretation of the gun ports open approach caused the Earth/Minbari War - ten years later the fact that the warrior caste does this has STILL not been explained to the humans?

Likely the standard Minbari protocol when dealing with outside races has been changed to "keep gunports closed" in order to prevent such a misunderstanding from happening again. Neroon's ship was a special circumstance; it was carrying the body of Shai Alyt Bramner, and Neroon himself is shown to be a racist from the get-go (believing humans inferior, and refusing to explain his actions to them), so it's not a stretch to believe that he saw Minbari traditions as taking precedence over outside-contact protocol. Delenn, of course, has firsthand knowledge of the pitfalls of this particular tradition, and once she realized what was happening, she moved quickly to prevent a misunderstanding.

Londo is the Prime Minister and the heir to the throne, but he still has to take commercial transports to get back to homeworld. The Centauri seem really cheap. Also, G'Kar talks about booking a seat next to Londo. (He calls the aisle seat, har har.) Don't they have sleeper cabins for a four-days trip? Especially on Centauri transports, they do have anti-grav. Drazi transports you might understand being strapped to a seat, they don't even have gravity!

On Zhabar (Drazi homeworld), Garibaldi is attacked by some guys in black cloaks. He grabs a button off one of them which Londo identifies (after randomly walking into a meeting in Sheridan's office) as coming from the coat of a Centauri royal guard. Why were the guards sent in-uniform on a covert mission?

Londo mentions in another episode that it's common in monarchies (which the Centauri Republic is, despite its claims to the contrary) for a royal decree to be made which is then never rescinded. As a result the order continues to be followed, even after there's no reason for it. Possibly at some point in Centauri history, someone declared that the Centauri Royal Guard must always be in uniform, and no one ever added the proviso saying that undercover agents were exempt. Or maybe the guy used one of his spare buttons to replace a missing button on a civilian outfit, and never thought about it again.

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